Ways To Make Extra Money Series: 20 More Income Generating Ideas From Our Readers

A while back we ran a series on this site where we looked at a variety of ways that you can create extra income for your family. Creating a side income is a great way to get ahead and dump debt faster, work towards maxing out that Roth IRA or 401(k), or to just build up that emergency fund. Having secondary sources of income has been a huge godsend for our family, and I believe it can be for yours as well.

Today I thought we could look back at some of the posts we’ve done in the past couple of years that involved creating side income, including posts from our “Ways To Make Extra Money” series. Have your own posts about how to make extra income? Leave a link in the comments and I’ll try to make sure it gets approved.

Reader Ideas for Creating More Income

Today I thought I would wrap things up with a few more ideas brought to us by our readers in the comments, as well as suggestions given on Twitter. If you want to add your own – as always – add your suggestions to the comments!

Money Making Ideas from Twitter:

Make Money by starting a local community website and selling advertising locally. @mattjabs

Sell old movies, CDs, books on Amazon. Everyone has at least 10 items they’ll never use again that they can sell. @foreignersfinan

If you have a skill like another language, you can try tutoring for local schools or universities (I’m fluent in German). @lafoxey86

Mechanical Turk will pay at least a few bucks an hour. Was just playing around with it last night, it’s interesting! @ericabiz

Think about stuff you don’t like to do and would pay somebody for, then offer that as a side hustle. Dog Poop anyone? @fiscalgeek

Depending on how much soda your family drinks, there’s always recycling. Money’s low but it’s a good lesson for the kids. @ipickuppennies

Tutor students in courses you did well in. People want to get high grades/pass and they are willing to pay for it. @studenomics

Can you guess my favorite way to make extra money? @deliverawaydebt (as in delivering pizzas!)

Money Making Ideas from the comments:

English as second language is huge right now with the migrations from various parts of the world. There are certificate programs you can take or you can do it informally. That’s a niche you can enter for no other reason than being able to speak the native tongue! Kevin at Out Of Your Rut

My wife has begun keeping kids in our home. I am starting part-time census work this month. Ken at moneymakingsense.com

If you happened to have a plow for your truck in the southeast this year you could have made a killing as much snow as we have gotten. Supply and demand was in effect and the demand for snow clearing far outweighed the supply of plows. Kyle at SuburbanDollar.com

I am commissioned as a notary here in WA, and when I was laid off in 2008 I took a gamble and started a full-time mobile notary service. It keeps me busy and is great income. I got additional training on how to close real estate transactions (I wouldn’t advise anyone to try to do it without that training) but if you’re already a commissioned notary or can become commissioned easily in your state, the “odd job” general notary work is great extra income. Jessica at thepennywisefamily.com

Last summer garbage collectors in Toronto went on a very long strike, my brother (a entrepreneur by nature) took quick advantage of the situation by setting up his own private temporary garbage collection services. Start up cost was about $700 and they made over $25,000 in about 3 months. Paid tuition for 3 years. Ray at Financial Highway.

A friend of my was able to make some extra money writing short scripts for a production agency. They ranged from 10-30 pages, and it was basically creative story telling. They gave him the premise, he made up the rest. Easy money considering all you have to do is come up with some stories! myfinancialobjectives.com

I used to have a thing for designer shoes (in my carefree days of high living off of credit cards). There were many pairs that I sold on eBay for about $800, but they were mostly unworn Jimmy Choos. I had a few other pairs that were equally lovely but I couldn’t get any interest on eBay, so I took them to a local consignment shop that only deals in high end merchandise. Out of the 8 items I’ve taken in, so far, I’ve made $250. Danielle at thefrugallawyer.com

My husband and I have turned my hobby of making hair bows for girls into a business. bowsoprecious.com

Amazon’s great for selling books, movies, etc. The amount of people on Amazon is ridiculous and when I sold textbooks in college I was shocked by how many books old and new I could sell. Austin at foreignersfinances.com

Conclusion

One of my main reasons for doing this series, was not necessarily to give specific ideas and methods for making money, but rather to get the creative juices flowing and to help you to find your own best method(s) for making money.

So often on personal finance blogs we focus only on the frugality aspect of personal finance. But in reality, you can only cut back so much and you can only be so frugal. My opinion is that you ignore the other side of the coin – generating income – at your own peril.

There are a million and one ways that you can find to generate income, you just have to find where your skill sets lie, what you’re passionate about, and where there is a need. So go out there and start earning!

Have more ideas for generating income? Have a sure fire way to make money? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!

Another way to make some extra money is to become an affiliate to a company such as amazon. By displaying links (with your account id) to their products on your blog, you can make a commission for each product purchased by someone using your link.

All of these ideas are based on getting paid for your time. If you don’t work it now, you don’t get paid. When my wife and I looked for another source of income, we decided to work towards something that could not only add to our income today, but also replace our jobs in the future. That is why we became distributors of a online greeting card and gift company that markets it’s products and services through the MLM marketing plan. We became customers first and loved what they do so much that we decided to join and see if we could possibly replace our jobs with income from own business and the true residual income it can provide. Besides, our products bring great joy to the people who recieve them, and our closest competition can’t come close to providing the quality, price, and the service that I can provide for my customers. I really have no competition.

Nice work on this series, Pete and staff. Obviously you’ve engaged the readers and are “getting the juices flowing”. Once thing I struggle with is picking an idea and sticking to it. I guess you can use a combination of things, but I struggle with prioritizing my efforts. It would be good to explore methods for helping you prioritize and be consistent.PT´s last post ..Question of the Week: Who Does Your Car Service?

You can also start up a blog on WordPress or use a hosted platform and solicit referral income from local businesses. Also – do you have a business? Consider collaborating with non-competing businesses to issue a coupon sheet or coupon book, and everybody else subsidizes your ads :) Start your own side business – it’s a great fallback when you lose your job – at least you can declare your business losses on and pay zero taxes while you are busily applying for every job!

I’m a huge believer in generating a number of streams of income. It in fact is the only thing that has continued to keep us moving forward in our financial goals during the last few years that our primary business has taken a HUGE hit. In fact I just finished our personal taxes and was surprised when I thought I really hadn’t done any mystery shopping last year I still made about $1,000 from that. It all adds up!

What a great series! Another tip that I really didn’t seem mentioned up there is freelance writing. There are so many gigs that can be found online through outlets such as TextBroker, Craigslist and more. I do this on a part-time basis and can easily snag $25 per hour.

Hi, i just started subscribing to your newsletter, and wow! Am I amazed! I love that all of these things are Biblically based. I recently have started to clean other peoples’ houses. I started with just one and now I am up to 4 houses and am continuing to grow. Praise God! He is so good! I am a stay-at-home home and my husband is a part-time EMT. Sometimes he has an over abundance of hours, and some he has very few hours, so the extra that I bring in helps with life’s essentials. You know, like gas for the car, food and other such needful things! Thank you so much for putting this newsletter online. It is very much needed.

The information contained in BibleMoneyMatters.com is for general information or entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional financial advice. Please contact an independent financial professional for advice regarding your specific situation.

In accordance with FTC guidelines, we state that we have a financial relationship with some of the companies mentioned in this website. This may include receiving access to free products and services for product and service reviews and giveaways.

Any references to third party products, rates, or websites are subject to change without notice. We do our best to maintain current information, but due to the rapidly changing environment, some information may have changed since it was published. Please do the appropriate research before participating in any third party offers.